Conferences don't just happen. Someone is always in charge, and the planners can design a conference so that it's innovative and participatory or so that it's just another boring series of lectures. The Podcast Hotel in Portland Oregon, as explained by Alex Williams at Corante, is a new conference model that brings together podcasters/bloggers and musicians in an experimental format. Podcast Hotel coincides with Portland's MusicFest NW. Participants can book rooms at the cool Jupiter hotel, which can be used as studios for recording, editing or producing, discussion spots, or just to crash. Rooms will be open on some days. There will be how-to workshops on podcasting and videoblogging, interviews of musicians, recordings, and lots of podcasts. The conference was originally scheduled for July, but has been reset for September 6-7, 2005. Doc Searles calls this latest in conference design, the unconference.
